[107]. The Cysthus, Greek **** is the private parts of a woman. Aristophanes, Lysistrata, v. 1160: “And a more beautiful cysthus I never saw.”
[108]. Pliny Nat. Hist., XII., ch. 12: “The leaves of the nard must be considered more minutely, for they are a principal ingredient in perfumery.”
[109]. Quintilian, Instit. orat., I., ch. 1: “He can learn the interpretation of the occult languages, what the Greeks call ****** Alcuin, Grammatica, p. 2086, in Putschius’ Collection: Glossa is the interpretation of a verb or a noun; e.g. catus is the same thing as doctus.” On this occasion it may be permitted to the Director of the Court-Library at Coburg to state, that this library contains a remarkable copy of the collection of Putschius, by the hand of John Scheffer, who died at Upsala in 1679, beginning thus: “The notes to be found in this volume, on the margin of books IV. and V., of Priscian, have been made after a very ancient and most beautifully written manuscript, in which a number of traces of primitive Latin orthography are found, as for instance: dirivare for derivare, peneultimus and antepeneultimus for penultimus and antepenultimus, Oratius for Horatius, etc.”
[110]. As we are on the subject of the shape of the female organ, it will not be amiss to enumerate in this place all the various names by which it was known in Latin; the greater part of them we have gathered from the treasure-house of Aloysia Sigaea: “The field, the ring, the furrow, the cavern, the clitoris, the conch-shell, the cunnus, the little boat, the cysthus, the pit, the garden, the between-thighs, the barque, the swine, the wicket, the slit, the precipice, the hole, the trench, the sheath, the virginal, the vulva. And what should hinder us from giving at the time the names of the virile member: The armature of the belly, the catapult, the tail, the stem, the parcel, the column, the pole, the lance with balls, the amulet, the pike, the groin, the hanger, the mentula, the mutinus, the muto, the nerve, the virile sign, the stake, the peculia, the penis, the stopper, the phallus, the javelin, the tree, the obelisk, the shaft, the spectre, the seminal member, the awl, the bull, the dart, the balista, the beam, the thyrsus, the vessel, the little vessel, the vein, the private, the verpa and verpus, the verge, the ploughshare.” Here you have more than enough.
[111]. Altrinsecus, in Ausonius, is equivalent to utrinsecus, meaning, from either side. Lactantius employs that word in De Opificio Dei, ch. 8: “It is incredible how the fact of their being double (the ears) adds to their beauty, as much on account of the symmetry thus produced, as because the sounds which arise on all sides, can more easily be received on both sides (altrinsecus).”
[112]. Persius, VI., 13: “And you may mark the crime with a black Theta.” See also Martial, VII., 36.
[113]. I say it was adopted by them particularly; that there were also young men, who by a singular depravity licked the vulvas they might have entered legitimately, Martial tells us, XI., 86:
“An evil star, Zoilus, has struck your tongue of a sudden, even while licking a vulva. Of a surety, Zoilus, you must now use your member.”
[114]. When the middle-finger is pointing, the other fingers are turned inside, representing thus a mentula with its accessories; for which reason it was thus pointedly shown to Cinedes (the Greeks expressed this in a single word: ******), either by way of invitation or to tease them. Martial, I., 93: “Cestus has often complained to me, Mamurianus, that you tease him with your finger.” It was also pointed at people held in contempt. The same author, VI., 70:
“He points with the finger and that the impudent finger” (that is Martianus, who is never ill, does to the doctors). Thence this unlucky finger had the epithet “infamous.” Persius says without any obscene afterthought, II., 33: “The grandmother cleanses the babe with the infamous (middle) finger.”